


By Any Other Name

by MsMusic



Series: VLD Presents [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Galaxy Garrison, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Male Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Trans Character, Transphobia, but only for like three paragraphs, transphobic Garrison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 02:39:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13067391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMusic/pseuds/MsMusic
Summary: For as long as Pidge could remember, her brother had been there to offer support and helpful advice. Matt was always there for her through thick and thin and would continue to be there to help her discover who she truly was. If she kept that support in her heart, it didn’t matter who she was as long as she was herself.





	By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> This is my third work in the VLD Presents series and the longest yet. I worked super hard on this one and am so proud of how it turned out!  
> It should be said that I myself am not transgender and have not experienced any of the following myself. I wrote based off of research and testimonials from people who have gone through similar things.  
> (Note that this fic was written and posted pre-seasons five.)  
> I hope you enjoy my take on Pidge's journey!

Michael knew from a very young age that something was amiss. The first person he went to was his brother. Michael told his brother that he wanted to go by a different name. It wasn't that he didn’t _like_ the name Michael; in truth, he liked it a lot. He just didn't like it for _himself_. When his brother asked him what name he’d prefer to use, Michael answered that he wanted to use his middle name, Kaden. It just felt like a better fit. His brother looked down at him and smiled, giving him a big hug and exclaiming what an excellent choice it was. He even quoted Romeo and Juliet, telling his that no matter what he called himself, he was still the same “little pigeon.”

Shortly after, Michael — now _Kaden_ — and his brother told their parents of the change and they seemed happy enough with it. The name “Kaden” took a while to get used to, but it felt so much better than the old one. Well, it did at first. It was never perfect, but it was still fine. Until it wasn’t. 

Kaden knew there was still something wrong about it. He could feel his flesh crawl beneath his skin whenever people would refer to him; it was like his whole body was covered in bugs that he couldn’t get rid of, and it just got worse as he got older. People talking about what a handsome boy he was. How his parents should be proud of their son. What a nice young man he was becoming. It took him a couple of years before he realized why it bothered him so much. Or rather, why it bothered _her_. 

She tried to keep it buried down, to keep it to herself, but the thought that things still weren’t right kept clawing at the inside of her skull. She wasn’t handsome. She wasn’t a son to be proud of. She wasn’t a nice young man because she wasn’t a man. She was pretty, she was a good child, she was a girl. And it was time somebody recognized that. 

Again, her brother was the first person she told. He could tell something was wrong. He had noticed Kaden seemed off during dinner that night. Kaden was being particularly silent, even cringing any time the younger Holt was the subject of conversation. It was small, subtle, nothing their parents would notice, but he knew this wasn’t normal for Kaden to act this way. Not only for Kaden to behave so strangely as though troubled, but for Kaden to try and mask the fact that there was any trouble at all or keep whatever it was hidden. 

He came into her room to check on her and found her curled up on her bed, tears silently falling from her eyes. He didn’t hesitate to comfort her. He didn’t push or ask what was wrong, he just was there for her. The second he sat down next to her she broke down in a fit of tears. She almost wanted to keep him in the dark, tell him that everything was fine and move on like nothing had changed, like _she_ hadn’t changed, but she knew she couldn’t do that. Not to herself and not to him. She couldn’t keep lying and he deserved to know his sister for who she really was. She had to tell him the truth.

And so she did. Between broken sobs and shaky breaths she finally told her brother that she was a girl. He accepted her without a second thought, holding her close and telling her that he would always be there for her, embracing her in more ways than one. Of course he would. How could she expect anything else? 

And so they stayed there together, curled up on her bed, Matt whispering how proud he was to have a little sister like her as she smiled into the fabric of his shirt, crying tears of joy. 

They kept it between them for a few weeks. Matt suggested the name Katie and it felt right. It didn’t make her feel dysphoric at all. It was close enough to her old name that it was familiar, but was much more comfortable for who she was now. And so it stuck. Katie would go through her day pretending to be something she wasn’t, something everyone else wanted her to be, pretending to be Kaden. But when she and Matt were alone, she was just Katie. 

She still needed a middle name. Maybe not needed, but wanted. She wanted a full name. She was a whole person who deserved to have a whole name just like anyone else. One that made her comfortable in her own skin without losing that connection to who she was. Katie thought about it for a long time. She did still like the name Michael. A lot. What about the name Michelle? Katie Michelle Holt. Yeah, that had a nice ring to it. 

Pretty soon Katie was free to be who she really was. Her family was nothing but supportive when she told them. They let her grow her hair long and wear dresses and go on hormone blockers and go by Katie at school. It felt so right. And if there were days where it didn’t, she kept it to herself. She was still adjusting after all. At last she was truly herself. No need to make it any more complicated. Besides, she had bigger things to think about, like getting into the Galaxy Garrison. When she found out her brother had been accepted, she wanted nothing more than to join as well. She was certainly smart enough, she knew she could make the grade. There was nothing holding her back. 

Or so she thought. 

Katie had been in her room studying when her brother asked if they could talk. He had done some more digging, looking into the acceptance rates and criteria and policies and whatnot of the Garrison. Matt told her how proud he was to have a sister as brilliant and determined as she was. But that determination wasn’t enough. She couldn’t join the Garrison. At least… not as a woman. While “Michael” may have been accepted into the Garrison, “Katie” never would.

She didn’t understand at first. There were plenty of women in the Garrison, women she looked up to, women she admired. But then it clicked. Katie couldn’t join because she wasn’t like those other women. She felt like them on the inside, but the Garrison just didn’t see it that way. That was it. She couldn’t go. There wasn’t even any point in applying. She wasn’t going to get in. Everything she had hoped for and worked toward for years had been taken from her on a technicality. She cried. She cried for a long long time. 

A few months later came the Kerberos mission. Katie had wanted more than anything in the world to go to space with Dad and Matt. Her father told her they’d be back before she knew it and soon enough she’d be going on epic space quests of her own. She appreciated that he kept his hopes high that someday she’d be able to join them; it helped her believe that things could change.

Then the mission went wrong. “Pilot error” they said. She didn’t believe it for a second. But there’s only so far belief can get you. She needed proof. She tried sneaking in, hacking the computers, but she got caught and banned from returning to the Garrison ever again. She knew what she had to do. She needed to find out what really happened to her family. But the only way to get that information was from the inside. And there was only one way of getting inside. 

She didn’t tell her mother. Katie knew it would crush her to lose another member of her family, but it was crushing Katie not knowing what had happened to the family she already lost. She needed an alias for her application. Katie remembered Matt’s nickname for her, what he would call her jokingly from time to time in order to annoy her. What he called her the first time she started discovering her identity. She didn’t even hesitate.

Pidge Gunderson was accepted into the Galaxy Garrison. Katie managed to get ahold of the letter before her mother saw. This was it. She was really doing this. She packed her things and waited for her mother to fall asleep. She cut her hair in front of the bathroom mirror before grabbing her brother’s glasses, ready to start her new life. Well, ready as she’d ever be. She left a note on her pillow. Katie took a deep breath and closed her eyes, refusing to look back. Finally, Pidge walked out into the night. 

She had finally gotten everything she ever wanted. It sucked. She didn’t want this anymore. She had wanted to go to space for so long, but not like this. She didn’t want to be a part of the government organization that wouldn’t let her in as a girl, the same organization that took her brother and father away. Not only that, but she was sure having to present as a male was going to be absolute hell. And it was. A lot of the time. But other times it wasn’t so bad. Some days it even felt almost… right. Other days it felt like she couldn’t take one more minute of it. But she pushed through the awkwardness and focused on finding out more about what was really going on. She had to find her family. 

What she found instead wasn’t at all what she was expecting. Night after night Pidge would go to the roof, scanning the cosmos for any clues as to what really happened on Kerberos. Using the equipment she had built herself from scratch, she managed to pick up almost definite proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. Alien radio transmissions. And one word standing out among it all: Voltron. 

One night, two of her classmates, Lance and Hunk found her. They didn’t believe her when she told them what she had heard. Why would they? Anyone else would find it ridiculous. But on that night, of all the nights she’d spent on that roof, watching those stars, they were about to find their proof. 

Everything happened so fast. One minute the three of them were watching an alien spacecraft fall from the sky, the next they were speeding through the desert with the third crew member of the Kerberos mission Takashi Shirogane and some dropout named Keith that Pidge’s classmates knew. Pretty soon the five of them were hiding out in the middle of nowhere waiting for the morning to come. This was not how Pidge had envisioned getting answers. 

They spent their time in Keith’s shack in the desert. They put together the few vague clues they had, trying to figure out their next move. And of course Hunk had to go digging through Pidge’s personal belongings. It was a miracle he didn’t find anything about her real identity in her diary. And that he didn’t look too closely at that picture of Pidge and “his girlfriend”, really a picture of her and Matt. She didn’t know what would happen if they found out who she was. 

The group finally managed to get enough of a lead that they set off to find out what these aliens might want. And what they found was… incredible. It was so surreal. A gigantic blue cat spaceship. A spaceship that took them very _very_ far away. Before Pidge really knew what was going on, they were whisked off to the far reaches of space and to a planet none of them had even heard of before. 

It was there that they found out what “Voltron” really meant. 

Voltron was a super weapon mech meant to be piloted by five paladins to fight off an evil empire that was taking over the galaxy. And Pidge, Lance, Hunk, Keith, and Shiro were to become those paladins. 

It was a lot happening all at once and it was both the most terrifying and exhilarating thing to have ever happened to her. Pidge had been chosen to be a paladin. Yesterday she was sitting at the Garrison listening for any sign as to what happened to her father and brother, now she was actually going to find out. She was finally going to get her family back. Not only that, but she was actually out in space with a crew of her own. Just like her father said. 

Things weren’t easy at first. Pidge had trouble letting the rest of the team in. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them, but after keeping up her charade for so long, it was difficult to go back. It was like coming out all over again. Sure, maybe it had gone over well the first time with her own family, but she had no idea how the rest of the team would take it. She tried to convince herself she had nothing to fear by telling them the truth, that they would accept her, but it was so hard. At least she knew she had Shiro on her side. Of course he knew who she was, he was on the Kerberos mission with Matt and their father. After he promised her secret was safe with him, he had become somewhat of a surrogate brother to her. When Pidge did tell the rest of the team that she was a girl, she was met with nothing but acceptance from everyone. Well, maybe more ignorance at first in the case of Lance, but he came around eventually.

Fighting side by side with these people she came to call her friends, she felt alive, in her element. She wasn’t Michael, she wasn’t Kaden, she wasn’t even Katie. She was Pidge, the Green Paladin of Voltron. She was a geek and a nerd. She was a whiz with computers. She was clever. She was sneaky. She was quick. She was a great pilot. She was all of those things. It didn’t matter if she was a boy or a girl or… whatever. She was _herself_. 

And then Shiro vanished. 

She ran out of the cockpit, tears blurring her vision. _She couldn’t do this_. She bolted as far as her legs would take her, and they didn’t take her very far. _Please, oh god, not again_. She hid inside the wall panels by her lion. _It’s like losing Matt all over again_. She stayed there for a long time, crying to herself.

She could hear the rest of the team looking for her, trying to find her. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to be found. She kept quiet, trying not to sob too loudly. She just wanted to be left alone. Or she thought she did, until Keith found her. She broke down; he held her for ages as she cried in his arms. He comforted her, talked to her, calmed her down, helped her get her emotions out. After a few minutes, he got her back on her feet and looking for any clues as to what happened.

She worked tirelessly. She worked for days, weeks, months. Trying to find what happened to Shiro, trying to track down the whereabouts of Matt, all while being a Paladin of Voltron. It took a while to adjust to not having their Black Paladin there, but they made do. Even put Keith in change, which came with its own challenges, but they managed. They were actually starting to feel like a team again. 

And then Shiro came back. Pidge didn’t need to have worked so hard to find him, he found them instead. It should have come as a relief; they could finally go back to the way things were. 

But they never really did. Shiro was the leader again, but he couldn’t fly the Black Lion anymore. And then he was able to pilot it again when Keith wasn’t there in an emergency, so Keith left the team to train with the Blade of Marmora and Shiro took over for Black again. It was all so much change and back and forth; nothing was the same one minute to the next. Everything felt so much simpler when she had Matt. Even if she couldn’t figure out what was going on in her own mind, Pidge always knew he’d be there to help her along the way. She missed her brother so much. And she would stop at nothing until she found him. 

And she did find him. After ages of searching, Pidge found a lead. She followed it. She didn’t stop until they were reunited. The second she lay her eyes on his face, she froze. Her heart seemed to both stop and speed up at the same time. After hardly a moment’s hesitation, Matt and Pidge both fell into each other’s arms, tears streaming down their faces. His grip around her was so strong and so tight. He no longer had that familiar smell that reminded her of home, and he definitely looked a bit worse for wear. But even though so much about him was so different, it felt as though nothing had changed. She didn’t know how to describe her feelings any way other than pure joy. She finally got her big brother back. The person who had been there for her through thick and thin. The person who always supported her in her quest of self-discovery no matter what, who she always kept in her heart as she came into her own. For the first time in a long time, possibly ever, everything felt right with the world.

Pidge showed Matt all around the castle she had come to call home. She told him all about her many adventures, about joining the Garrison and becoming a Paladin of Voltron and defeating Zarkon and working to form the Coalition. Matt was very impressed, but the thing he found the most interesting was her decision to continue going by the moniker Pidge, even after telling everyone who she was. 

She explained that ever since joining Voltron, it didn’t matter who she was. She was just the Green Paladin. And that’s what that name meant to her. It was just a name. It was ambiguous, it was androgynous, It wasn’t male or female. It was both, it was neither, it was somewhere in between, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was just Pidge. And maybe that’s where she was. And maybe she was okay with that. 

And of course Matt was too. After all, what’s in a name? That which we call a paladin by any other name would kick just as much ass.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked my Pidge fic! You can check out the other fics in the series if you like or check out my other series Tales from the Castle of Lions. Also please leave comments telling me what you thought, I'd love to hear some feedback. :)


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